CockroachDB
At #4 of 22 in our database management systems ranking, CockroachDB is summed up in the catalogue as: Distributed SQL database sold per vCPU-hour, with a revenue-capped free licence.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderA vendor never writes its own entry here, CockroachDB included, although paid placement exists; see the disclosure for how links are marked.
Visit CockroachDB See it in the database management systems ranking
At a glance
| Headquarters | United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | No free plan recorded |
| Best for | Teams needing SQL that stays available across regions or clouds |
| Pricing model | Cloud billed per vCPU-hour, published; self-hosted licence free below a revenue limit |
| API | Nothing recorded about an API |
| Deployment | Self-hostable, Cloud or hosted |
What is CockroachDB?
CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database made by Cockroach Labs. It speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, stores data as replicated ranges across several machines, and keeps transactions strongly consistent, so an application can keep using ordinary SQL while the cluster survives the loss of a disk, a machine or a whole data centre. The vendor says it was inspired by Google's Spanner and aimed at transactional (OLTP) workloads that must stay online across regions, and it states plainly that heavy analytics is not yet a good fit.
It is offered as a managed cloud service on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, as a bring-your-own-cloud option, and as software you can download, run in Docker or deploy on Kubernetes. Teams pick it when a single PostgreSQL or MySQL server has become the scaling or availability limit, and sharding by hand would cost more engineering time than they want to spend.
CockroachDB key features
- Horizontal scaling by ranges. Data is split into ranges that divide as they grow and are rebalanced onto machines with spare capacity, spread through a peer-to-peer gossip protocol. The vendor says this removes the manual sharding that a single-node SQL database would need.
- Survives failures. Each range is replicated, and the cluster recovers from disk, machine, rack and data-centre failures without manual steps, per the vendor's FAQ. Multi-region clusters on the paid cloud editions carry a 99.99% or 99.999% availability SLA.
- Distributed ACID transactions. Transactions that touch rows on different nodes keep ACID guarantees. The vendor states that single-row reads return in 2 ms or less and single-row writes in 4 ms or less.
- PostgreSQL compatibility. Because of the PostgreSQL wire protocol, standard drivers work. Languages tested include JavaScript and TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, C, C# and Rust. A docs page rates third-party tools as full, partial or partner supported.
- Migration tooling. Cockroach Labs documents migration from PostgreSQL and MySQL with its MOLT tools and also supports importing data from CSV files. The docs warn that some features or syntax from the source database may need manual porting.
- Backups and recovery. Cloud clusters get managed backups by default, with frequency and retention adjustable on Standard and Advanced clusters. Self-managed backups to your own storage bucket are available as full and incremental runs.
- Change data capture and replication add-ons. Data Synchronization (CDC) streams every change to systems such as Kafka. Physical cluster replication keeps a synced copy in another region for failover, and cluster virtualization runs isolated virtual clusters. Each is billed per vCPU-hour.
Who CockroachDB suits
- A fintech running payments across regions. Money movement needs strong consistency and no single point of failure. A multi-region Mission Critical cluster with CMEK, egress controls and PCI DSS configuration is the vendor's route for such production applications.
- A SaaS start-up outgrowing one PostgreSQL server. The team keeps its drivers and most SQL, follows the PostgreSQL migration guide, and starts on Standard with the trial credit. It scales vCPUs up or down at any time instead of re-sharding the application.
- A platform team with a European customer base. The pricing calculator offers Frankfurt, Paris, Ireland, London, Stockholm and Milan as primary regions, so the team can place a cluster close to users and spread replicas over several regions.
Getting started with CockroachDB
The cloud route starts with creating a CockroachDB Cloud account. A first organization receives a 30-day trial with $400 in credit, and no credit card is needed for Standard. In the console you click Create cluster, choose Standard, pick AWS or GCP, select one or more regions, keep the default capacity of 2 vCPUs and name the cluster.
It is ready within seconds, after which you create a SQL user, save the generated password and copy a connection string. Sample code in several languages is provided. For self-hosting, the docs point to a downloadable binary, Docker and official Kubernetes configurations. Applications that already use PostgreSQL drivers connect with little change, but the vendor notes that automatic client-side transaction retry handling is not included unless stated.
Our verdict on CockroachDB
Billing is per vCPU provisioned, so an idle cluster still costs money, and the trial gives 30 days with a credit before clusters pause. Since version 24.3 the code is under the CockroachDB Software License.
Self-hosting is free only for businesses under 10 million in annual revenue, and clusters throttle after 7 days without sending telemetry. Cockroach Labs is headquartered in New York.
The database management systems list places CockroachDB 4 of 22: SQLite sits directly above it and MongoDB directly below. From place 4 the established names follow in their ranked order; we publish no numeric score.
Home market: the United States, one of 15 North America bases among the 22 products here.
The case for and against CockroachDB
- Billing is per vCPU provisioned, so an idle cluster still costs money, and the trial gives 30 days with a credit before clusters pause.
- Per vCPU-hour is among the traits we single out for it.
- CockroachDB is tagged Software licence in our records.
- Best for: Teams needing SQL that stays available across regions or clouds.
- Marked in our records as distributed SQL.
- Self-hosted use beyond the free licence needs a paid Enterprise licence, and unsent telemetry throttles clusters after 7 days.
- Billing follows provisioned vCPUs, so an idle cluster is still charged.
- Look elsewhere if you are Small applications where one PostgreSQL server is enough.
CockroachDB pros and cons in practice
- Uses the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so existing drivers and many frameworks connect without a new client library.
- The trial gives $400 credit for 30 days with no card needed on Standard, which is enough to test a real workload.
- Compliance documentation lists SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, PCI DSS and HIPAA, which shortens procurement for regulated teams.
- Compute can be adjusted at any time and billing is metered by the minute, so short tests do not lock in a commitment.
- Idle clusters are billed for what is provisioned and stored, so a quiet development cluster still costs money until it is deleted.
- The vendor says the database is not yet suitable for heavy analytics, so reporting workloads need another system.
- An edition is fixed per cluster, and moving from Standard to Mission Critical means backup and restore into a new cluster.
- Some PostgreSQL or MySQL features need manual work when migrating, and client-side retry handling is not automatic in every driver.
What CockroachDB costs
Pricing as recorded: Cloud billed per vCPU-hour, published; self-hosted licence free below a revenue limit.
For new Cloud organizations created on or after 15 September 2026 the vendor prints Cockroach Continuum pricing. Standard costs $0.092 per vCPU-hour on AWS us-east-1, about $203 per month for 2 vCPUs and 100 GB. Mission Critical costs $0.162 per vCPU-hour, about $1,528 per month for 12 vCPUs and 100 GB, with dedicated infrastructure. Billing is metered by the minute and charged monthly, idle clusters still cost money, and data transfer is billed on top. Add-ons cost $0.006 (Standard) or $0.023 (Mission Critical) per vCPU-hour for CDC. Annual and committed-use contracts get volume discounts, and rates differ by cloud and region. Existing customers keep their current plans.
We took this from cockroachlabs.com, the vendor’s own site, when we reviewed Best Database Management Systems in 2026; that review is dated 7 November 2026.
CockroachDB: data and security
The vendor's compliance page states that CockroachDB Cloud meets SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 27017, and that CockroachDB Advanced is certified as a PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider and meets HIPAA requirements when configured appropriately.
The pricing page lists customer-managed encryption keys, egress controls, row-level security and column-level encryption by edition. Inter-node traffic uses TLS 1.3 per the security overview. Clusters sit on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure in the region you pick, including several European regions.
CockroachDB in numbers and labels
| Product | CockroachDB |
|---|---|
| Vendor website | cockroachlabs.com |
| Primary guide | Best Database Management Systems in 2026 |
| Alternatives page | Not written yet |
| Gaps in our records | headcount, funding and customer count |
| Headquarters | United States (North America) |
| Rank there | #4 of 22 |
| Catalogue tags | Distributed SQL, Per vCPU-hour, Software licence |
| Head-to-head pages | None yet |
| Hosting | Can be self-hosted |
| Price visibility | Public on the vendor site |
Integrations and ecosystem
Integrations the vendor names (10):
- Kafka (via CDC)
- PostgreSQL drivers and ORMs
- MOLT migration tools
- AWS Marketplace
- Google Cloud Marketplace
- Azure Marketplace
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Single sign-on and SCIM provisioning
- Customer-managed encryption keys
Alternatives to CockroachDB
We pick the closest products in the same guide by tags, price model and region.
- Redis (#6 of 22): Not for: buyers who need cheap storage for very large vector collections. Memory-first data store used for caching, queues and sessions, now tri-licensed.
- Microsoft SQL Server (#10 of 22): Windows and Linux database licensed per core, with free Express edition.
- Oracle Database (#11 of 22): Commercial enterprise database, now branded Oracle AI Database, with capped free edition. Best for: Large organisations already tied to Oracle licensing, tooling and staff. (United States)
- Google Firestore (#16 of 22): Serverless document database on Google Cloud with an optional MongoDB-compatible API. Suits: Google Cloud teams who want a document store with no capacity planning. (United States)
Every guide that lists CockroachDB
| Guide | Position |
|---|---|
| Best Database Management Systems in 2026 | #4 of 22 |
CockroachDB FAQ
9 answersHow does CockroachDB rank for database management systems?
Position 4 of 22 is where CockroachDB sits among database management systems.
What does CockroachDB cost?
Cloud billed per vCPU-hour, published; self-hosted licence free below a revenue limit is how we record the pricing of CockroachDB. On free access, no free tier or free plan is recorded.
What else should I look at besides CockroachDB?
Start with Redis, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database and Google Firestore. Each of them has its own entry in the same guide.
Where is CockroachDB based?
Our records put CockroachDB in the United States, a North America vendor. Check hosting separately: the data centre need not be in that country.
Who should choose CockroachDB?
Teams needing SQL that stays available across regions or clouds. It is a weaker match for the following: small applications where one PostgreSQL server is enough.
Is CockroachDB compatible with PostgreSQL?
It uses the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so PostgreSQL client drivers connect. The vendor says most applications can follow its migration guides, but differences in features and syntax may require manual changes. A list of tools rates support as full, partial or partner supported.
What happens when the free trial ends?
The trial ends after 30 days or when the $400 credit is used. Clusters are then paused, and a 30-day grace period lets you add a payment method to resume on usage pricing. Without one, the clusters are deleted, according to the pricing FAQ.
Do I pay for an idle cluster?
Yes. The vendor bills what you provision and store, not how much you query. To cut cost you scale down or delete the cluster, reduce provisioned storage, tune backup retention and frequency, or switch off add-ons. Managed backups remain billable until they expire.
Can I run CockroachDB myself?
Yes. The docs describe downloading a binary, using the official Docker image or deploying with Kubernetes configurations. The vendor also lists a bring-your-own-cloud product and an enterprise option. Licensing terms for self-hosting should be read on the vendor's licence page before production use.
CockroachDB: sources
Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.
- cockroachlabs.com/pricing: Continuum pricing, trial, billing FAQ, add-ons, regions
- cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/frequently-asked-questions: Architecture, scaling, drivers, migration, OLAP limitation
- cockroachlabs.com/docs/cockroachcloud/compliance: SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001 and 27017
- cockroachlabs.com/docs/cockroachcloud/quickstart: Cluster creation steps and trial credit
- cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/third-party-database-tools: Driver support levels and retry handling note
- cockroachlabs.com/docs/cockroachcloud/managed-backups: Managed backup behaviour and settings
How we rank
The same four questions are asked of every database management systems product: time to value, real cost, the way out and the intended buyer. Here that gives CockroachDB the #4 position in a list of 22. Details: how we rank software.